Europe could die and decisions must be made now to prevent that. That serious message was at the heart of the speech French President Emmanuel Macron delivered Thursday morning in the opulent amphitheater of Paris’s Sorbonne University. The successive shocks that Europe has had to endure in recent years with the corona pandemic, global trade conflicts, the war in Ukraine and the flare-up of populism have exposed weaknesses of the European Union and according to Macron, action must be taken now if the EU is to withstand the test of time .
The European Union’s weaknesses are many and extensive – the president mentioned them one by one before students, French politicians and European diplomats in a speech that lasted almost two hours. Macron is concerned, among other things, about the poor state of the European armies, which also cooperate too little, and the dependence on other world powers in the areas of defense, technology, food safety and medicine. The climate and biodiversity crisis also pose challenges for Europe, as do immigration at Europe’s external borders, foreign interference and the lack of supervision of social media. “We do not determine the rules in this digital space, where our democracy is shaped.”
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Competing with China and US
The president came up with numerous proposals to make Europe a significant geopolitical player again, always with the same core: the European member states should cooperate more and invest more and smarter so that the EU can become autonomous and compete with China and the United States. According to Macron, this is necessary because those power blocs “no longer adhere to the trade rules” with the enormous support packages they pump into their economies.
To prevent Europe from being crushed, Member States should invest heavily in existing and a number of ‘sectors of the future’: artificial intelligence, quantum mechanics, space, biotechnology and green energy. He also wants European countries to enter into more “real partnerships” with third countries to counterbalance the “bipolar confrontation” between China and the US. “We must show that we are a balancing power.”
Europe is also “too difficult”, says Macron: there are too many and too complicated rules, including in the field of climate. “It is not sustainable to have the strictest environmental regulations, to invest less and to be more naive [dan andere machtsblokken].” Trade rules within the EU would also weaken the international competitive position of the Union. “We need to abolish the rules between the 27 countries so that we have a real shared market. Only then can you compete.”
Campaign kick-off
In France, the speech is seen as an attempt by Macron to get the campaign for the European elections of his Renaissance party out of the doldrums. He could use it: party leader Valérie Hayer has not managed to create momentum so far, the radical right-wing Rassemblement National is leading in the polls and the third party, the Socialists, is dangerously approaching Renaissance. Because Socialist party leader Raphaël Glucksmann held a large meeting on Wednesday evening, it almost seemed like a duel between the two.
But within the Élysée it is denied on all sides that the speech is part of the European campaign. “It is a speech by a head of state speaking on behalf of France. (…) That is something completely different,” says a source.
For the Élysée, ‘Sorbonne’ was mainly a follow-up to the speech that Macron gave in the same amphitheater in 2017. At the time, he – just elected and very young – was the one who put the theme of European autonomy on the European agenda with a puffy speech that is still often quoted. At the time, it led to other EU member states tempering Macron’s words. But after recent years filled with unrest and conflict, Macron sees that he has been proven right by his European partners. “The very French concept of sovereignty has become increasingly widespread in Europe,” he said with satisfaction.
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‘The EU is waking up’
The French president was also cautiously positive about other developments. While in 2017 he depicted a drowsy European Union, he now described how member states have realized that it is dangerous to be dependent on Russian gas and Chinese medicines. He celebrated the steps announced in recent years to reduce this dependency. He also emphasized several times that the importance of the existence of the European Union is hardly disputed anymore. While in 2017, radical right parties such as the PVV and the French Rassemblement National still advocated Frexit and Nexit, “no one now dares to talk about leaving the EU or the euro.”
We are waking up, Macron concludes. “But waking up is too slow.”
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